The present invention relates to articles which absorb and/or contain bodily exudates, including disposable absorbent articles such as diapers, adult incontinence products, sanitary napkins and the like. More particularly, the invention relates to disposable absorbent articles which comprise a fecal management member having a plurality of fibers oriented in the z-direction.
Absorbent articles comprising fecal management members such as diapers, adult incontinence products, or sanitary napkins are well known in the art. Such fecal management members acquire and optionally distribute and retain fluid body exudates such as urine and in particulate highly viscous body exudates such as menses, or fecal material deposited thereon by the wearer. Examples of such fecal management member can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,364,382 issued to Latimer et al. on Nov. 15, 1994 and in European Patent Application EP820746 published on Jan. 27, 1998, in the name of Palumbo et al.
To date, the liquid pervious/absorbent parts of most fecal management members in the art have been manufactured using, inter alia, essentially sheet-like materials. Most of the sheet-like materials used for this purpose contain at least some fibrous base materials because of the convenience to make liquid pervious/absorbent (i.e. porous) structures from fibrous materials. Conventional manufacturing techniques for such sheet-like materials form a sheet of fibers by orienting the fibers in the x,y-direction and then stabilize the sheet by bonding the fibers to each other at some of the cross points of the fibers.
However, the x,y-orientation of the fibers has some inherent disadvantages for the handling of fluids in particular highly viscous fluids by the fecal management member.
One objective of most fecal management members is to draw fluid and in particular highly viscous fluid away from the surface of the fluid insult into the bulk of the structure, i.e. to move the fluid perpendicular to the surface of the structure. The fluid transport in the fibrous parts of the fecal management member often happens along the lengths of the fibers caused by mechanisms such as wetting the surfaces of the individual fibers. Therefore, conventional fecal management members have the disadvantage of at least partially distributing the fluid along the orientation of the comprised fibers, i.e. in the x,y-direction. Thus, the fluid remains in close proximity to the surface of the fluid insult, i.e. close to the skin of the user.
To improve on moving fluid away from the skin of the user, it has been taught to provide absorbent articles having topsheets with a fibrous layer on their body facing side (see for example U.S. Pat. No. 3,967,623 issued to Butterworth on Jul. 6, 1976, or Belgium patent publication No. 1007041 issued to Filipovic on Feb. 28, 1995). These topsheets are intended to have the desirable characteristics of a fabric like facing material.
However, in order to achieve the fabric-like touch the fibrous layer comprised on the user facing side of these topsheets must not comprise stiff fibers. Stiff fibers could poke into the skin of the wearer leading to an undesirable wearing experience.
On the other hand, stiffness of the fibers in the fibrous layer is preferred in the context of fluid handling, in particular in the handling of highly viscous fluids. To maintain the fluid handling under usage conditions (such as the wearer sitting on the absorbent article), the fecal management member must preserve its structure as much as possible. Therefore, it must comprise fibers of a certain stiffness and resiliency.
Hence, it is an object of the present invention to provide a disposable absorbent article having a fecal management member which has an improved fluid transport in the z-direction by orienting a plurality of fibers in the z-direction. The fecal management member is covered with a topsheet to address the deficiencies stated above to avoid fiber contact with the skin of the user.
It is a further object of the present invention, to provide such a disposable absorbent article wherein the fecal management member provides sufficient pressure resistance and/or resiliency.
The present invention relates to disposable absorbent articles comprising a topsheet, a backsheet, and a fecal management member positioned intermediate the topsheet and the backsheet. The fecal management member comprises a first component which includes a support element. This first component has an inner major surface and an outer major surface. In addition, the fecal management member comprises a second component including a plurality of fibers. The second component has a thickness dimension perpendicular to the major surfaces of the first component and the fibers have a length dimension. The fibers of the second component of the fecal management member are attached to the support element. In an uncompressed state of the fecal management member, the fibers are oriented substantially perpendicular to the inner major surface of the first component of the fecal management member (i.e. substantially parallel to the thickness dimension of the second component) and the fibers have a length which is substantially equivalent to the thickness dimension of the second component of the fecal management member. In the disposable absorbent article, the fecal management member is oriented such that the second component is positioned intermediate the topsheet and the second component. In the disposable absorbent article of the present invention less than 50% of the fibers comprised in the second component of the fecal management member are joined to the topsheet.